The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In the Cold War’s 44-year history (accepting the general view that it started in 1947 and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1991), certain years have acquired special resonance, appearing to shape the uneasy East/West conflict more distinctly than the...
There is much legend associated with her life as a poisoner, and like all novelists do, I have taken the aspects of the story I liked best, and used a combination or research and imagination to fill the gaps. For the most succinct and detailed analysis of the real...
In 1931, a young RAF fighter pilot, Douglas Bader, crashed whilst performing unauthorised, low-level, aerobatics. Within his mangled biplane, the pilot lay dreadfully injured, his life only saved by the subsequent amputation of both legs. A lesser man would have died,...
Winston & Randolph Winston Churchill loved and depended on his wife, Clementine, he adored his three daughters Diana, Sarah and Mary, but he was obsessed with his only son Randolph. Nevertheless, Randolph occupies a curious place in the Churchill legend. He buzzes...
In the English-speaking world and even beyond, David Hume is widely considered to be the greatest philosopher who has ever lived. The 18th century Scot applied his finely calibrated scepticism to religion, morality, causation and the nature of the self, shaking both...
David Starkey is the latest historian to get in on the action of YouTube. Viewers will be familiar with him, of course, from his media presence (on television, radio, and in print); now, he has begun a YouTube series, the scope of which includes English political and...
The numbers are grim. Worldwide, nearly five million have contracted Covid-19; nearly 320,000 have died from it. Public health experts caution that those numbers are certainly undercounts. Some deaths are mistakenly attributed to underlying conditions, not...
She looked like royalty, or so thought many guests at the sight of Dolley Madison in her velvet inaugural gown and velvet and white satin turban with towering bird-of-paradise feathers. In full naval regalia, the head of the Navy Yard led her into the hall at Long’s...
The immediate hook is the film of the Robert Harris novel, Munich: The Edge of War – and its obvious agenda to rescue Chamberlain for history. You will remember, especially if you have seen the film - which has been available on Netflix from last weekend - that...
British Heroes of the Holocaust What would I have done? What could I have done? The approach of Holocaust Memorial Day prompts us to remember the millions of victims, their suffering and the brutality and squalor amid which they were murdered. But it should also...
